


hinge

by the_ragnarok



Series: cat!Jon [10]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Acephobia, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Canon Asexual Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Acephobia, M/M, Medical Procedures, Past Jon/elias, Past Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24915565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: Jon gets medical care for an old injury he hadn't realized he had.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood
Series: cat!Jon [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622008
Comments: 25
Kudos: 441





	hinge

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to lee for super quick beta!
> 
> More detailed content notes at the end.

After barely four bites of his dinner, Jon winces and puts his fork down. 

Martin, of course, notices this. His brow wrinkles with concern. "Something wrong with the food?"

Jon shakes his head, irritable. "My jaw hurts." He waves off Martin's look of alarm. "It does that sometimes, I just need to wait for it to pass." It's unfortunate, because he is hungry and the food is in fact quite good, but nothing for it. 

This does not make Martin look any happier. "The jaw itself or the hinge?"

"Hinge." Talking isn't particularly pleasant, either.

Martin's frown intensifies. "That could be an infection," he says. "It's a good idea for you to have that looked at."

"I'll take that under advisement," Jon says shortly.

Martin winces. "Sorry. I know it's not my place to tell you how to take care of yourself."

Jon raises an eyebrow. "But?"

"No buts." Martin exhales. "If you don't want to do it for any reason I can help with, though, I'd like to hear."

Jon hunches. He eyes his dinner and contemplates getting it packed to take home. "I don't like doctors."

"Yeah, I get that," Martin says sympathetically. "If you want me to come with, I will." He looks at his plate and wrinkles his nose. "Shall we get this packed up and go home?"

* * *

Martin's offer to accompany him ends up galvanizing Jon into action, because he's scared that if he waits too long, he'll take Martin up on it. 

Not because he doesn't want Martin to come with him. The idea of it is tempting in an oily, cloying way, the thought of letting Martin make the appointment, staying silent as Martin speaks for him, letting Martin make his decisions for him for a little while. The memory of Elias doing the same, years back, is still with him; he misses it and hates it in equal measures. 

Martin wouldn't want it the way Elias did, would be horrified if he knew Jon imagined him doing anything Elias had done. Even if Jon wanted it. Maybe especially if he did. 

So Jon grimly makes the appointment and shows up, receives a referral to a mouth and jaw doctor, makes another appointment and keeps that as well. 

The specialist beckons him into the room after a mere ten-minute wait. He has Jon sit on the examination bed in his office and runs gloved fingers over the hinge of Jon's jaw. The touch is clinical and gentle, but still Jon shivers with an emotion he can't parse. 

"Are you prone to hypermobility, by any chance?" the doctor says after examining him for several minutes. Jon looks at him, uncomprehending. "Flexible to a degree where you keep dislocating joints, that sort of thing?"

Jon frowns. "I don't think so." He'd dislocated his shoulders a fair number of times during rope work, but that had been with Elias, and anyway his shoulders had popped back into place easily enough. It probably hadn't been a proper dislocation. It hadn't hurt very much. 

"Well, you'd managed to dislocate your jaw at some point," the doctor says placidly. "A good long time ago, according to the symptoms you've reported. Do you recall having to open your jaw uncomfortably wide at some point before the pains started?"

Jon very carefully keeps from recalling any such thing. He shrugs. 

The doctor smiles at him. "Try and keep from doing it again, alright? Your joints are a bit loose. Take care. If it hurts to keep your mouth open, don't." He goes to the computer and taps a few keys. "You don't have any allergies, do you?"

* * *

Jon goes home with his jaw numb and his mind slightly loopy from the topical anaesthesia. According to the doctor, once it wears off he should be able to chew pain-free.

His flat's door is unlocked, to his alarm. It is reassuring to see Martin inside, sat on the sofa, and then alarming in a wholly different way. Jon fishes out his phone and sighs at his message history. He did invite Martin over, in the throes of painkillers, and then promptly forgot about it.

Martin fidgets. "I don't have to stay if you'd rather not have me." 

Instead of answering, Jon walks to the sofa and collapses with his head in Martin's lap. He answers Martin's, "Petting?" with a nod and closes his eyes, too worn to pretend to have dignity.

* * *

The anaesthesia wears off, but the fatigue remains. Jon closes his eyes and leans against Martin, grateful for warmth and proximity. "Thank you," he says, low. 

"It's absolutely my pleasure," Martin says. "I mean, not the part where you're hurting, obviously. Um. I'll shut up now."

Jon gently butts his head against Martin's shoulder. "Possibly that would be for the best."

Martin runs his fingers through Jon's hair, making him shiver. "If you're conscious again, care to tell me what the diagnosis was?"

"Dislocated jaw," Jon says, startling a little at Martin's hiss. "Apparently my joints are loose and easily dislocated, so it probably wasn't a big deal."

For a moment, Martin is silent. Then he exhales. "If you say so." 

Jon can still feel the tension in his muscles, though, and he's just floaty enough still to say, "Tell me how you really feel."

Martin lets out a burst of startled laughter. "I want to kill him," he says, quietly, after another pause. "It is his fault, isn't it?"

No need to mention who they're talking about. Jon nods. "Please refrain. I don't think I'd do well if you went to prison." It's still the drugs speaking, not Jon. Probably. 

Martin asks permission and, on getting it, hugs him.

* * *

They share Jon's bed that night, Jon under his heavy blanket, Martin with a thinner one and Jon's old purple fleece near his head. 

Despite the weight pressing down on him, Jon finds he has a hard time falling asleep. Finally, he whispers Martin's name.

"Yeah?" Martin sounds drowsy but reasonably present. 

Jon feels a pang of conscience. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't keep you up."

"Hey, no," Martin says, sounding more awake. "Talk to me. What is it?"

Jon hesitates. "I didn't know there was a medical reason my jaw hurt."

He sees the shadow of Martin's nod in the darkness, hears the studied neutrality of his voice when he says, "Makes sense."

Jon could drop it there. He should. He can't. "Maybe... maybe there's medical reasons for other things that bother me. For other things I can't do."

Martin exhales. "Such as?"

"Intercourse," Jon admits in the dark. He'd tried, Elias had tried, so many times, so many ways, and, "I just - I don't. My body, it doesn't. It can't."

Next to him, Martin is very still. His voice is still very neutral when he asks, "Is that something you want to do?"

"How can I knock it until I've tried it?" The words are familiar, bitter in Jon's mouth.

"Sounds like you have tried it," Martin points out. "More than once. But I mean, I don't have to have sex with a woman to know I'm gay, do I? There's no reason you should have to try any kind of sex you don't want to do."

"So that's it?" Jon huffs out in frustration. "A little pain and I get to stop even making the attempt?"

That gets Martin to groan. "You don't need to, to bite off your fingers to know you don't want to do that, and I don't see any benefit to you trying!"

"But that's not the same, is it?" Jon doesn't know why he's arguing, but his heart is pounding and it feels crucial to get to the bottom of this. "Plenty of people do it. Plenty of people love it. Why would someone waste their time on me when--"

"No," Martin says softly. Jon freezes, unsure what to do. "I can't listen to you talk that way about someone I love. Please. Not now."

Like a rush of icy wind, Jon comes to the realization that he's an idiot. Martin _also_ doesn't want to be touched in certain ways, and to imply to him that that's wrong... "I'm sorry," he whispers. "You know I didn't mean you, right?"

It takes Martin a moment to answer. "I wasn't talking about me, either," he says. "Unless it would help you understand it's not true for _you_. In which case, I was totally talking about myself."

Jon laughs softly. "Alright, point taken." He presses close to Martin, who lets out a surprised, happy noise that warms Jon throughout. 

Martin asks permission and wraps his arms around Jon. They don't feel confining at all. "If you want to explore stuff you couldn't do before, you get to do that. But please don't think you have to, or that you're not good enough as you are. You're wonderful." Jon yawns. Martin laughs, almost silently. "Message received. Come on, let's get you to sleep."

Martin gently pushes Jon back to his own side of the bed, then tucks the blanket around him like a snug cocoon. "There," Martin says softly.

Jon's getting to the point where falling to sleep easily almost isn't remarkable. He thinks he likes that.

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic:
> 
> \- food mention  
> \- self-shaming (and implication of external shaming) for not wanting/being able to engage in certain sexual acts  
> \- vaguely described medical procedures


End file.
